4 - Installation and experiences | Test Setup

Installation and experiences

Installation of a SSD drive is no different than installing any other drive. Connect the SATA and power cable, and you are good to go. Once you power on that PC of yours, the first thing you'll notice; no more noise! It is just downright weird. But my system boot drives are all WD Raptors and when that HD is crunching ... you know the HDD is alive alright.

So no more purring and weird noises. Completely silent, and I love it. The second factor you can rule out is heat. Modern day HDDs tend to get hot. When not cooled they can reach 40-50 Degrees C pretty easily. No worries though as the HDD can have it, yet the SSD remains completely cool to lukewarm.

Then there's that first boot up on the SSD, weird ... it's fast ... really fast. That's where you'll get the first smile to your face. But let's startup some actual tests.

Hardware and Software Used

Now we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.

Storage

Silicon Power SSD SLC (32GB)
Samsung SP0802N ATA (80 GB)
Maxtor 6 Y200M0 (200GB)
WD15 00ADFD0 Raptor (150GB)
OCZ CORE SSD MLC (64GB)

Mainboard

nVIDIA nForce 680i SLI (eVGA)

Processor

Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.0 GHz

Graphics Cards

GeForce 9800 GTX+

Memory

2048 MB (2x1024MB) DDR2 CAS4 @ 1142 MHz Dominator Corsair

Power Supply Unit

BFG 800 Watt ES

Monitor

Dell 3007WFP - up-to 2560x1600

OS related Software

Windows Vista Business Edition 32-bit SP1
DirectX 9.0c/10 End User Runtime June update
NVIDIA ForceWare 177.41
NVIDIA nForce 680i platform driver (latest build)

Software benchmark suite

PCMark vantage HDD test Test 1 to 8
ATTO Disk benchmark v2.02
SiSoft Sandra Storage Benchmark
HDTach 3.0.4.0